


what you remember isn't love

by Cancer



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Derek Deserved Better, Magic Manipulation, Mind Manipulation, Past Sexual Abuse, Peter is pack, but no actual rape happens here, due to magic reasons, exploring Derek's many traumas, mentions of rape/non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28410468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cancer/pseuds/Cancer
Summary: Derek doesn’t remember falling in love with Jennifer
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	what you remember isn't love

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags, there's no rape happening but a bunch of talk about rape having happened. I hope I didn't mess up anything on my descriptions of trauma, but if I did and something comes across as disrespectful or wrong, please do let me know. 
> 
> so I was reading old fics, as you do. and this has been bothering me for years. it seems that whenever people write about Derek's relationship with Jennifer they write it as if Derek had had any choice on it?? when it was confirmed that she was mind-controlling him to get what she wanted, and that when they had sex in that scene when he's injured she's actually raping him because he never consented nor did he actually want to have sex with her (which was also confirmed so it's canon), nor does he even remember that moment properly because he was injured and out of it. "but she did it to heal him!" No. It's Rape. and I thought, when he's finally free of her spell he probs doesn't even remember half of it. so yes. Derek deserved better and I still can't fucking believe they did this to him and this makes the fact that Stiles was talking about his "evil girlfriend" even worse and I will cry forever about this.  
> also i'm a sucker for Peter being a good uncle despite everything, like, idk but i'm sure he too feels guilty about what happened to Derek sometimes.

Derek doesn’t remember falling in love with Jennifer

He doesn’t remember much to be honest, just bits and pieces and he’s not sure if that’s better or worse.

He remembers saving her in the boiler room, bleeding and weak, and her soft hand on his when he helped her get up. He remembers thinking she was beautiful and wishing she didn’t have to be involved in this, that she could just walk away and forget, like he never got the chance to, like none of his pack could.

He doesn’t remember seeking her out again after that. He remembers being with her, but he doesn’t know why he was there, why he walked all the way there, why he followed her smell. He doesn’t know why he walked to her car when he was dying. He wants to believe he wouldn’t have, if his mind had been clear; that he would have gone to someone he knew already, not a woman he had just met, but he can’t be sure, somehow. He can’t say for sure.

He doesn’t remember most of the time spent with her, if they went on dates, if he took her hiking, if she took him somewhere she liked, if they went to the movies or for ice cream like teenagers in love or if it was just all physical, if they touched each other every time.

He doesn’t remember having sex with her. That’s a lie. He remembers her hands on him and her mouth on his skin, and his wounds closing behind her touch like his body was betraying him all over again. He remembers feeling empty inside, an excitement he couldn’t understand, confusion and frustration at not being able to focus on anything at all. The lights being too dark the sky outside too blue to be night, the bed too soft to be his, the sounds muted like there was cotton in his ears. He remembers pain and the dull ache of the sensation you get when you pour alcohol on a wound. The taste of her, the drag of her hair over his face.

He remembers lying there, awake but not, being touched, barely capable of touching back, not wanting to touch back. Feeling far away, as if his mind had decided to leave his body when he realized what was happening.

He doesn’t remember why he went back to her, after. Why he woke up and got dressed and went to her and kissed her, but he remembers long hot showers he couldn’t understand, and waking up at night in a cold sweat for days and days.

He had thought he was done, after Kate. He didn’t think it could happen again. Derek doesn’t think of Kate because there’s too many missing pieces, as if his brain is blocking half his past. There are holes in his memory where Kate put him to bed and climbed over him and then he’s home, feeling nervous and out of place and not understanding why he felt wrong in his own skin.

The days with Jennifer have been purposefully removed from his mind, carefully replaced with empty spaces and the necessity to look somewhere else whenever he wants to question what he did.

He didn’t think it would happen more than once. He was older, he had thought that would be enough to keep it away, to keep him safe. He was strong and more capable, and he had promised he would never let that happen to him again but now he sits on the corner of his bare room, the bed tossed out the morning after coming out of the fog, can’t bring himself to buy another one just yet. He sits there and holds his head on his hands trying to put the pieces back together, trying to fill in the blank spaces, trying to answer why.

He doesn’t flinch when Peter puts a hand around his shoulders because despite everything, Peter still smells like pack, like the home he lost. Peter sits there with him in silence, like he knows. After an hour he gets up and pulls Derek up with him, holds his face on his hands and kisses him on the forehead, like his mother used to do, like Peter himself did for him when he was little. He doesn’t ask Derek any questions, just takes him to the room upstairs where his own bed is, and lets him fall there, holds him close until he falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as moonkidphrase, crying about stuff and all over all of the fandoms, come say hi


End file.
